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“Let us go,” she said. “Let Larylis go and our kingdoms are yours.”
He barked a laugh. “You don’t expect me to—” He laughed again, so abruptly, it had him stumbling forward. He caught himself, hands on his knees. As he heaved again, she realized it wasn’t laughter at all but a coughing fit.
Larylis slumped, face easing with relief as he was finally freed from whatever Morkai had been doing to him. Mareleau’s eyes bored into her husband, willing him to realize this was his chance. Larylis’ eyes locked on the sorcerer, his hand flying to his hip—
His scabbard was empty.
He scrambled to his feet anyway, took a charging step forward.
Morkai righted himself and thrust a palm toward Larylis. Mareleau’s heart sank as her husband stumbled back, clutching his chest once more. Streams of red flitted through the air from the gash in his arm, dancing toward the sorcerer’s open palm. It became a ball of crimson, like the one he’d held before.
Morkai’s chest heaved. He swiped his free hand over his mouth, but when he pulled his palm away, his eyes widened. Mareleau wasn’t sure what he saw in his hand, but the blood smeared over his lips made it easy to guess.
He’d coughed up blood.
Whatever was wrong with Morkai—or Teryn’s body—it was catching up to him. Something like fear danced in his eyes as his lips curled up in a snarl. “You want to live?”
“Let my wife go,” Larylis bit out. “Do what you will with me.”
“No!” Mareleau called. “Lethimgo. Please! I’ll make any promise.”
Morkai’s jaw was tense, all prior amusement gone from his face. “Fine. I’ll give you a chance to survive, brother.”
“Don’t call me that. You’re not Teryn.”
Morkai reached for the sword at his hip and freed it from its scabbard. He tossed it to the side, letting it land in the grass several feet away. “If you can survive a fight with my Roizan, I’ll let you and your wife live.”
The monster leaped away from Mareleau toward her husband. Morkai turned his palm to the ground, and the bead of blood disappeared. Larylis straightened, freed from the sorcery, but the monster was just a few feet away. Mareleau’s heart climbed into her throat as Larylis dove to the side, reaching for the sorcerer’s discarded blade.
Morkai shifted before her, blocking her view. “Stay here and watch,” he muttered, reaching into his jacket pocket. He extracted a vial with one hand and unsheathed a short knife with the other. She caught sight of him rolling back his sleeve and making a shallow cut in his flesh before he turned around, back facing her.
Of course he turned his back on her.
She’d succeeded in presenting herself as weak. To him, she was just a woman he could manipulate. A queen he could steal from.
She inched backward, lips peeled back in a snarl. Her hand closed over something hard. Glancing down, she saw the hilt of a dagger. It was the one Larylis had given her before he’d left the tent. She’d dropped it when she’d glimpsed her father’s face on the monster, but now her fingers curled around it. Chest heaving, she rose to her feet, blade in hand.
58
Teryn tried to step into his body, but it was no use. Morkai’s grip on Teryn’s cereba was too strong. It was nowhere near as malleable as it was when the sorcerer was asleep. The only time he’d managed to control his body while awake was when he’d intercepted Cora’s kiss. He couldn’t fathom what was different now, aside from Cora’s obvious absence. Perhaps the Roizan was to blame. Already Teryn could tell the sorcerer’s magic was stronger. No longer forced to rely on spells cast on paper, he could weave blood through the air like he had before he’d died.
Morkai was doing so now. A pattern formed over his open palm, one intricate line at a time. It was constructed from two strands—one emerging from the vial in his hand, the other from the blood that seeped from the cut in his forearm.
Teryn cast a glance at his brother and found him engaged with the Roizan. They clashed, a flurry of claws and teeth versus the sword Larylis had managed to snatch from the ground. Teryn’s eyes flashed back to the weaving Morkai was creating, the strands of blood that danced through the air in complex loops and lines. He knew better than to trust what Morkai had said; there was no way he’d let Larylis live. He knew what his plans for Mareleau were—to provide Emylia a body—but even she would have to die to bring it to fruition. And since Morkai had Teryn’s body to blame for all that he did, all that he forced Larylis and Mareleau to sacrifice, he had a workaround over the rule that the crown must begiven not taken.
Teryn looked back at the fight. It had barely begun, but already Larylis had suffered a slice over his torso. Though Teryn had a feeling the battle was more than one of survival. If Morkai was forging a blood weaving…
“He’ll make Larylis part of his Roizan,” he said under his breath. With a renewed sense of urgency, he stepped into his body once more, felt the buzzing resistance all around him. His ethera fought against the movements of a physical form not under his control. He aligned his ethera’s hands with his body’s hands, tried to wrest control, turn his wrist, drop the blood—
“He’s not making another Roizan.” Emylia appeared before him, gaze locked on Morkai’s palm. Her eyes lifted to his, wide with terror. “Creating a Roizan with multiple human lives made it strong enough to do what he needs to do next. Your brother’s battle with the Roizan is a distraction. You saw how Morkai coughed up blood. He’s running out of time. You both are.”
Teryn glanced back at the pattern that continued to weave, studied the two distinct threads of blood that tangled together. Something tugged at the edges of his ethera, an unyielding pressure that grew with every beat of his heart.
“I recognize this pattern,” Emylia said. “He’s finalizing his possession of your body.”
* * *
Cora didn’t knowwhere to look, what to do. Chaos filled the meadow as the fire continued to eat away at the tent, its flames now lapping up the sides of the next one over. Larylis was doing his best against the Roizan, focusing on dodging swipes and landing blows on its limbs to slow it down, but it was an unwinnable fight. His only advantage was the creature’s bulk and lack of agility. Even so, the Roizan was a monster of magic. She had no doubt it could outlast a human’s stamina. All it needed was one fatal swipe of claws. One violent kick of its rear hooves.
